


All Indiscreet Hearts Seemed Romantic Fools

by zetsubonna



Series: Easy Living [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3891721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zetsubonna/pseuds/zetsubonna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So the prompt was, "Hi there! Do you think Bucky and/or Steve ever said "I hate you" in anger to the other? And if so, what would you say caused it & how did they both react?" It was sent anonymously. The result is 2002 words of character introspection, present tense, and a glimpse at how I imagine Sarah Rogers' relationship with Bucky.</p><p>Characters are not mine, but the work is. Do not repost elsewhere. Cheers. ~Z</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Indiscreet Hearts Seemed Romantic Fools

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "My Heart Stood Still" from _A Connecticut Yankee_ , 1927- the year they met, in my headcanon. ;3 (These damn nerds...)

Bucky is twelve and Steve is eleven. It’s 1929 and everything is scary since the market crash. Bucky’s pretty smart, school-wise, but he isn’t all that savvy about why anyone would want to buy anything that you couldn’t see, taste, smell or touch.

Steve’s ma is sick. He’s not in the mood to be clever and funny, like Bucky’s gotten used to from him. Even when Steve’s got one foot in the grave and one in the mud himself, he can crack jokes, but when Mrs. Rogers is ill, Steve’s an absolute pill.

Bucky’s been bringing Steve library books from the public library, because he can read them out loud to his ma. They have a radio, sure, but it’s second-hand and shabby, and lately it don’t pick up anything but snowy signals from the news. Steve can’t even hear the ball games anymore, and Mrs. Rogers keeps trying to push him to go outside anyhow. Steve’s terrified of leaving her alone, so he only goes as far as the sitting room, sometimes the roof or the front stoop. Bucky comes. He doesn’t ask Steve to go any farther. He knows Mrs. Rogers is all Steve’s got.

“My sunshine boy,” she calls him, stroking his cheek, and Steve knows Bucky can hear, his stubborn little glare dares him to tease, but Bucky never does, not a snicker, not a smirk. Bucky can tease, he can be as quick and sharp-tongued as any big brother, but he doesn’t over this. He and Steve mostly rattle each other over being stupid. Though sometimes Bucky does call him a skinny thing, mostly because Bucky’s chubby and Father Hoolihan’s been on him to lose weight already. Steve doesn’t point out he’s skinny because he’s sickly and Bucky only gets heavy in winter, when he holes up in his place or Steve’s with his library books and can’t be pried outside. He’ll be a skinny thing if it makes Bucky feel better. These are the concessions that best friends make for each other, gracious, unspoken gestures of love between boys who are already trying to be men, even before they know what, if anything, that means.

Bucky comes, with books and a pair of thermoses, careful every step because Mrs. Barnes has made a special exception today and the only shadow Bucky has is the one the warmth-less sun is putting on the ground. He has soup. Enough, knowing Mrs. Rogers, for two dinners, not two as in one each but two as in two nights, though that was not Mrs. Barnes’s intention and Bucky knows it. He also knows that Steve will blame Bucky and get annoyed with him for telling his mother the truth about whatever questions she asks with regards to Steve and Sarah’s wellbeing.

Steve meets Bucky at the door. Not on purpose, but Steve was already out on the stoop and he saw Bucky coming a block away and had plenty of time to work himself up and turn a deep, fierce, angry red.

Bucky doesn’t mind Steve red. He has seen Steve gray, and white as death, and purplish-blue with asthmatic convulsions. Red, angry Steve is okay, as long as it doesn’t go any darker, even if he’s shaking with rage, even if he’s cussing Bucky to the ground.

Steve sees the book strap and some of the shaking stops, and Bucky controls his expression very well. Bucky is a born liar, sure. Steve, too. Steve’s a better liar than Bucky, because he lies every day: he’s not cold, he’s not hungry, he’s doing fine, thank you. Bucky’s lies are whiter: I didn’t notice, I had no idea, it wasn’t me, and I wouldn’t ever.

“You’re doing too much,” Steve complains.

“Don’t,” Bucky waves him off. “The books are me. Soup’s Ma and you know it.”

“Your ma’s a busybody,” Steve says, sulky, and Bucky gives him an easy thunk in the back of the head.

“No mothers,” he says, mild. “Hold your fire. Anyways, it’s good soup. Let’s take it upstairs. My damn fingers are about to freeze off.”

“Your ma’s a busybody and so are you,” Steve bites, but clamps his mouth shut when Bucky raises his hand to hit him again and goes to open the door. The Rogers’ place is on the third floor, and Bucky’s carrying everything still, because Steve won’t acknowledge there’s anything to carry.

“Steven?” Sarah calls softly from the bedroom at the sound of the opening door, and Steve glowers at Bucky because she’s meant to be asleep.

“Yes, Ma,” he says. “Buck’s here.”

“James,” Sarah says warmly. “Come see me, _a leanbh_ , I’m not catching.”

Bucky hands the thermoses to Steve, who goes to carry them to their tiny kitchen. Bucky leaves the book strap on the chair.

Bucky goes and sits carefully on the edge of Sarah’s little bed, letting her hold his hand in both of hers. Sarah’s touch is clammy and a little cool, but Bucky doesn’t react to that, he gives her back the smile she’s beaming at him with every tooth in his head- even the front two that stick out and make him shy to part his lips for anybody. He can feel Steve coming back from the kitchen and glaring daggers into his back, but he ignores it.

“You’re beautiful as ever. You sure you’re sick?” he asks her. “You ain’t ducking Stevie for some extra sleep?”

She laughs and the daggers get sharper and slice to his bones.

“Save your charms for a girl gone to market, James Buchanan,” Sarah retorts, giving his fingers a squeeze. “How is it you’ve no ducklings today? Did the matron grant you a reprieve?”

“I tied ‘em to the hydrant outside,” Bucky lies, easy, grinning.  “Didn’t figure you had room for Dorothy, the Wogglebug and Button Bright in your hair.”

“Indeed I don’t,” Sarah says, pretending to be prim and touching her hair. “Steven’s braided it up for me, I look like a princess, if I must say so myself.”

“You’re gonna have to say it yourself, ma’am, on account of how I ain’t got any manners,” Bucky says, and Sarah laughs so hard she almost coughs and Steve’s eyes are flensing the skin from Bucky’s bones.

“Come sit with us, Steven,” Sarah calls, patting the other side of the bed, and Steve sighs and comes, the strap full of books landing by Sarah’s hip.

“What has our book wagon brought us today?” Sarah asks, and Steve undoes the clamps to sort the covers out.

“Mostly science fiction,” Steve says, and Sarah makes a soft, excited sound.

“I wish I’d had the money to bring over some of my old books when I came,” Sarah sighs. “You’d have loved George Griffith, James.”

“Yeah?” Bucky’s intrigued. “Why ain’t we got him here?”

“Politics, likely,” Sarah says, coy, and Bucky wrinkles up his nose because she doesn’t ever explain, when she says that. “ _The Steam Man of the Prairies_ ,” she reads. “James, this book is older than I am.”

“Don’t look a gift book wagon in the mouth,” Bucky says, and Steve snorts. “Anyway, it’s by that Ellis fella you hate so much, see? Figured you and Stevie would have a lot of fun picking it to pieces.”

Sarah smiles at Steve. “We do sort of burn brighter when our collars get hot, don’t we, Steven?”

Steve sighs. “Yes, Ma.”

“Did I see you with those thermoses, earlier?” she asks him, then peers at Bucky. “What’s your mother tasked you with, now?”

“Soup,” Bucky says. “Chicken in the color one and tomato in the silver. Wanted to come over and fuss in person, but I talked her out of it, mostly because I didn’t want her dragging Jackie out in this weather.”

Sarah looks at Steve, who looks back at her with visible exasperation and they both sigh. Sarah squeezes Bucky’s hand and Steve glances away.

“It’s very sweet of you all to worry,” she says, “But I do wish she wouldn’t do so much. Will you tell her that, please?”

“I’ll try,” Bucky says, visibly uncomfortable, “But you know I can’t tell my ma what to do any more than Stevie can tell you.”

Sarah laughs softly. “I know that, and I know you’ll try. You’re a good boy, James Buchanan. Now, take my good boy out to the stoop for a bit, will you? I’m going to try to go back to sleep.”

They’re on the steps a few minutes later. Steve’s wrapped up in his coat, and Bucky’s glad Steve’s too much smaller than he is to know it was his coat the year before they met. It was too big for Ricky by a lot, but only for Steve by a little bit.

“I hate you,” Steve says, and Bucky flinches back from it like a punch in the stomach.

“Stevie, I was just-“

“You weren’t just nothing,” Steve spits, quiet and shaking, more from anger than cold. “You weren’t just minding your own business, which is what I asked you to do. We don’t need charity, Buck. We ain’t just off the boat.”

“I know,” Bucky says, dropping his eyes to his feet and stuffing his hands down in his pockets. “Look, it’s like your ma says. We was worried, all right? We worry. We’re allowed to worry.”

“You can worry yourself up a tree,” Steve snaps. “The books are fine. _Soup_ is fine, if it’s my ma who’s sick. But you try this shit next I’m sick, I’ll break your nose, Bucky, you see if I don’t.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Bucky protests, and Steve cuffs him in the shoulder, hard and sharp.

“You got a big mouth,” Steve says.

“It _wasn’t_ ,” Bucky insists, his ears red. “Even so, everything’s about to get even worser, Stevie, everybody says so. It’s gonna get darker before it gets brighter. Everybody’s gotta help everybody if we’re gonna make it through this, that’s just how it is.”

“Your ma has four of her own to look after, I don’t need her looking after me,” Steve says, low and dangerous. “And if that means I go back from having one friend to not having any, so be it.”

“It ain’t looking after,” Bucky says. “It’s just sharing, and it ain’t nothing Ma wouldn’t do for her sisters, if they was closer. She loves your ma and you, and if we could only heat up one room between the seven of us, we’d bunk together, came to that. Wouldn’t we? Tell me your ma wouldn’t do the same for us. Look me in my face and tell me.”

Steve huffs, but he knows he can’t lie to Bucky’s face, not about his mother. His mother’s the kind of woman who works herself to the bone in wards full of dying folk, smiling like an angel, he can’t pretend she’d be selfish.

“I hate you,” he repeats, softer, with most of the acid gone.

“Then hate me,” Bucky says, defiant. “Hate me all you want, makes you feel better. But you n’ me? We’re gonna get through all of this, even if we gotta quit school and get jobs before we’re even fourteen. Don’t act like you wouldn’t do for Becky, Ricky and Jackie, even if I told you not to do for me. I don’t believe you.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. Bucky’s shaking when he puts both hands on Steve’s shoulders to squeeze them, but the manly gesture doesn’t feel right and he yanks him into a hug instead. Bucky’s breath is hot on Steve’s neck and Steve hates being grateful for the warmth even more than he hates needing help.

“Get off me, you idiot,” he complains. “We look like a couple of kids out here, the fuck are you doing?”

“You’re a shit,” Bucky says, though there’s a laugh in it when Steve gives up and hugs him back, however briefly. “Shove it up your ass, Rogers.”

“Jerk,” Steve mutters, straightening his coat.


End file.
